"Genes determine everything." This is the famous saying of Dr. Maxim Rothchet.
Sixty years ago, at the tail end of an old era, Dr. Rothchester was an expert in the fields of genetics and biology, and he approached science as much as he did himself with equal zeal and madness. Since he couldn't find enough volunteers, or test subjects, to practice his genetic research results, he turned his attention to himself.
In ten years, countless gene fragments were implanted in his body. These genes work together, mix with each other, and mutate. In the later stage, Dr. Rothchet's body has become a natural genetic battlefield, countless genes are always fighting and mutating, trying to eliminate or control opponents. As the carrier of genes, hundreds of deadly viruses can be found in the doctor's body at any time.
As Kosi, Dr. Rothchet's daughter, said, the late Dr. Rothchet was no longer genetically human.
In his later years, Dr. Rothchet also believed that he was no longer a human being, but an apostle of the gods. Especially when his genes undergo a series of recombinations, finally forming a mysterious, stable and brand new genome.
At that time, the doctor's left hand could condense an unusually high temperature, enough to ignite alcohol. This is a temperature that the human body cannot bear at all, but the doctor's left hand was not injured afterwards.
"This is the left hand of God!" Rothchet stared at his left hand, and uttered his second famous saying known to the world.
In the following year, the doctor's ability to control high temperature has gradually stabilized, and the temperature at which condensation can be continuously increased. The doctor recorded the preliminary stable genome and the experience of controlling high temperature, and divided the data into three parts, two parts were saved, and one part was prepared for publication, announcing his results to the world.
On the day of the doctor's press conference, the war broke out without warning.
The instant high-temperature flames and shock waves destroyed everything, including the doctor who thought he had the body of the gods. However, the doctor's short but shocking speech has been sent to all corners of the world through the airwaves.
The brief war ended as abruptly as it had come.
The surviving people began to come out of various shelters and ruins, looking at the unrecognizable world in horror. Some caring people still remembered Dr. Rothchet's speech, and found the safe left by Dr. Rothchet. The safe that condensed the crystallization of pre-war technology was safe and sound, and the data inside was also intact.
This information is the first-level ability of the magic-like domain: the prototype of flame.
All human abilities start from this.
Ten years later, in this turbulent era, various abilities spewed out like mutated insects. Some of these abilities are very stable, some have very short effects, and some even bring fatal results. Moreover, it was discovered that those people who survived in the wild and in the ruins and were exposed to radiation all the time did not need to artificially carry out tangible genetic recombination, and various abilities began to appear.
After categorization, aggregation, systematization, and a series of quarrels, all kinds of abilities with clear definitions and stable effects were finally summarized into five major ability domains: spell-like, combat domain, perception domain, psionic domain and mysticism.
Spell-like is the general term for various energy manipulation abilities. In order to commemorate the doctor who was a magic paranoid during his lifetime, he named the earliest discovered ability domain as Spell-like. Combat domain is the general term for all kinds of combat offensive and defensive and mobility capabilities. The perception domain, as the name suggests, all the abilities to detect the known or unknown world can be attributed to this domain. The Psionic Domain is a collection of various control abilities, the most common and popular of which are all kinds of weapon operations, from the most basic cold weapon operation, ordinary firearm control, sniper specialization, etc. to advanced complex weapon system command.
In the end, it is mysticism, a field of abilities similar to tasteless, and almost all vague abilities that cannot be classified can be thrown into it. In mysticism, the core ability is luck, all kinds of luck. However, those who invest a lot of evolution points in mysticism often don't get the luck they imagined. They neither discovered rare mineral deposits, nor obtained huge wealth or superhuman abilities out of thin air, and in the end, they died no less than those who majored in other ability domains. There was once a person who did discover gem veins, but ended up being chopped into meat paste by greedy mobs. As time goes by, fewer and fewer people practice mysticism.
Of course, the distinction between domains is not so clear, rigid, and insurmountable in reality. With the passage of time, more abilities are emerging, and many new abilities are difficult to simply classify. A specific ability domain, and some abilities require the cooperation of multiple ability domains to appear.
At this time, the former lunatic Dr. Rothchet has been honored as the father of the ability domain. The doctor opened a door with his god's left hand, adding chips for the survival and continuation of the human race in the harsh world. However, until now, people still don't know whether the road behind this door leads to heaven or hell.
When the people who survived in various bases gradually woke up from the halo of their abilities, they discovered in horror that everything in this world is no longer stable, including genes, the genes of all living things.
All creatures, including human beings, are changing rapidly. The evolution and mutation process that took thousands of years in the old era has been condensed in just a few years in the new era. The cognition of the world accumulated by human beings for thousands of years is collapsing at an alarming speed.
Look, there is a row of afterimages passing outside the barbed wire fence. It is a rabbit with red eyes, long ears, and a docile temperament that is relying on speed to escape from predators. But no one can guarantee that this animal is faster than a leopard today. , what will become next year.
Therefore, this new era is called the era of turmoil.
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William walked cautiously in the deep cave, his footsteps were light and soft, like a nimble cat, moving silently. The thick hooded cloak and the bandages all over his body kept his scent and body temperature from leaking out, which also made it difficult for the dangerous underground creatures that rely on their sense of smell or infrared vision to hunt him to find his existence.
He was holding a thick triangular steel pipe with sharp edges and corners in his hand. The front end was ground very sharply. It could be swung and stabbed straight. It was a terrifying weapon. The modified rifle and pistol are carried on the back and hidden under the cloak respectively. His pistol is powerful but poor in accuracy. However, the power of this pistol can be doubled in cave passages.
The problem is that in this deep and quiet passage, the gunshots can travel very far, which is tantamount to telling monsters within a few kilometers that I am coming.
William's eyes glowed with a faint blue light, and the light kept changing with the changes in the ambient light and darkness, and the scenery in the passage became clearer and clearer. This is the ability that appears at the third level of visual enhancement in the perception domain, low-light vision.
In this cave, several electric lights were arranged at the N11 base, illuminating more than 100 meters near the base. This is the project left over from the last exploration of the base. The electric lights no matter how deep they went were destroyed, and the base wisely did not send additional personnel to repair and restore them. But for William, who has low-light vision, as long as there is a little light, he can see the surrounding scenery clearly.
William is now walking in the dark passage. The occasional glowing moss in the passage, and the faint glow of sewage, were enough to make his low-light vision work.
At a corner, William suddenly stopped in his tracks, retracted his whole body into the cloak, and slowly disappeared into the darkness.
There was a low rustling sound from the cave, and a ferocious gopher one meter long came out. The disproportionately large nose holes on its head were constantly moving towards the sky, and its small eyes were dim. It seems to have degenerated almost. Dire gophers and their cousins, the ground-dwelling dire rats, were almost indistinguishable a decade ago, but are now almost divided into two species.
William, who was quietly crouching in the darkness, suddenly moved! The triangular steel pipe pierced out like lightning, pierced against the upper end of the Dire Rat's nose, pierced through the upper and lower jaws, and firmly nailed it to the ground.
The nose is the most important point of the Dire Rat, it screamed frantically, its four short, thick and sharp claws were desperately grabbing the ground, the gravel splashed, and in a blink of an eye, it dug a hole in the hard rock.
William held the upper end of the steel pipe tightly with his left hand, but his seemingly slender arm was as unshakable as a rock. The Dire Rat, whose vitals were badly injured, couldn't hold on for even a minute, its body convulsed violently, and then lay motionless on the ground.
William slowly pulled out the steel pipe, turned the dire rat over, and saw clearly that it was a female rat. Male dire gophers are used to acting alone, and when females appear, they are always followed by a male.
Chapter 7 Part 2
William quickly moved a few steps sideways, and stood in the center of the passage where the ferocious gopher appeared. He squatted halfway with his front legs and rested on the ground with his back feet, and raised the steel pipe horizontally, aiming at the deep and dark passage. Almost at the moment when he leveled the steel pipe, a gust of wind suddenly gushed out from the passage, and a thicker and more ferocious gopher male mouse suddenly jumped out of the darkness and bit William in the air!
The steel pipe remained motionless, and with the momentum of the ferocious gopher, the sharp tip of the steel pipe penetrated deeply into the gopher's throat, passed through the internal organs, and almost broke through the anus.
William let go, and took a few steps back quickly, with a light and quick posture, as if gliding on water.
With a click, the ferocious gopher almost used all its strength to close its giant mouth, and bit hard on the handshake of the steel pipe. Although its incisors can gnaw through almost all rocks, they are still not as hard as this thickened steel. With the sound of clicking, the steel was immediately dented, and the male rat's teeth were also shattered.
The male rat charged too hard, and after falling from the air, it slid several meters on the rough ground before rushing in front of William.
William raised his right leg and stepped on the male rat's head. The male mouse squeaked and wailed and struggled, but the mouse's head could not be lifted from the ground at all. As long as it exerts force, the body pierced by the steel pipe will feel unbearable pain. Even though it was severely injured, it still struggled for more than a minute before it stopped breathing.
William's good-looking eyebrows moved slightly. To him, these vicious gophers had more tenacious vitality than they had a few months ago. Such a speed of mutation made him feel very uncomfortable.
William didn't intend to use the steel pipe that fell into the male rat's body. He groped around the cave wall for a while and pulled out a wire. This is the lighting circuit installed at the base, which is now disused. William cut off a two-meter-long section of wire, and peeled off the paint in the middle, exposing the tough alloy wire inside. He wrapped the two ends of the wire around his hands respectively, and continued walking into the darkness.
Even in a dark and rugged cave, William Youbi's eyes and rich experience could identify the traces of the dire gopher, and it didn't take long for him to find the dire gopher's lair. There are more than 30 vicious gophers, large and small, in the nest. The big ones are almost adults, and the small ones have not yet opened their eyes. It can be seen that these gophers belong to three different litters. Judging from the three-month adulthood of dire gophers, they can basically give birth to one litter a month.
"The fertility period has been shortened by another ten days." William silently calculated, feeling more uncomfortable in his heart.
But his bad mood didn't affect him. He used the alloy wire to trap a ferocious gopher in the air, and then pulled and shook, the gopher flew back, but the blood spurted from its neck and hit the wall of the cave. Once you fall, you can't get up again. The blood-sticky alloy wire brushed against the ground again, and seven or eight little gophers instinctively opened their mouths to bite. However, the alloy wires vibrated slightly, and their heads were almost cut in half.
A minute later, the brood of dire gophers was completely extinct. Dire gophers are creatures with a very strong sense of territoriality. With this litter of dire gophers, there should be no second litter of gophers within one kilometer.
William took out a map, supplemented the topography of the passage in the blank part on it, marked the location of the mouse nest, and put the map away carefully.
Walking forward a few hundred meters along the cave, William stopped in a collapsed place. Behind the pile of land, there is a hole that can only be passed by one person. On the other side of the cave entrance is a subway passage that is as complicated and deep as a maze and full of unknown dangers. Coming here means that the 500 yuan bonus has already fallen into his pocket, and on the other side of the cave, a genetically modified potion is tempting him.
William half-kneeled at the entrance of the cave, listening attentively.
The wind blowing from the subway passage was strong and weak, and there was a faint rustling sound inside. The air is very polluted and the oxygen content is very low, which is not suitable for ordinary human beings to survive. This is also one of the reasons why the N11 base cannot explore the subway passage more deeply by itself.
William was certainly no ordinary human being. Whether William, who has a third-level ability in the Perception Domain and a second-level ability in mysticism, can still be considered a human being, even he himself doesn't know. After killing the brood of dire rats, William felt that the genes in his body were about to move again. He has accumulated three genetic evolution points, and maybe he can get a new evolution point by walking around the subway passage.
Evolutionary points are the common parlance of turbulent times. The so-called evolution point is actually the space left for new genes after gene shock. More evolution points means more space, and also means that it can withstand the injection of more powerful new abilities. There are various ways to obtain evolution points. Most of the naturally generated evolution points are obtained for unknown reasons. In addition, there are mainly two ways that humans can control, genetically modified drugs and combat.
Of course, after having an evolution point, a specific genome needs to be obtained to form the corresponding ability. Within each capability domain, there are a number of identified capabilities. However, more capabilities are still in the fog. The evolution points obtained through battles are often accompanied by new abilities, and most of the time, these abilities are different from known abilities. Therefore, many fighters regard their abilities as the greatest secret. When two ability users meet, after killing each other, there will be a very small chance of obtaining the other's ability.
So, ironically, in these turbulent times, killing does make people powerful.
William closed his eyes, and the faint rustling sound outlined a clear image of a living corpse in his mind. They wandered aimlessly, their dark red eyes hungrily scanning everything around them. Unlike the zombies that often appear in novels of the old era, the living corpses are thin, flexible and agile, and even move much faster than humans. Their strong muscles and flexibility allow them to easily climb and move on walls and even ceilings. From a genetic point of view, living corpses can still be regarded as human beings, while those high-level fighters who have undergone multiple genetic modifications are farther away from pure human beings.
Fifty years have passed since the war, and many of the living corpses now belong to the second or even the third generation. They are faster, stronger and better able to adapt to harsh environments than their parents. Many of these living corpses living in subway passages have evolved infrared vision to adapt to the often dark environment.
William reconfirmed that there were no dangerous creatures clinging to the hole over there, then took out his pistol, lightly jumped into the subway passage, made another long jump, and walked quickly on the rails. He travels fast, quietly, and never loses his balance on the narrow rails.